What are the Backrooms? Explaining the viral horror sensation as ominous teaser lands

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A24 just dropped the first trailer for their new horror film, Backrooms. If you’re unfamiliar with the online phenomenon it’s based on, the trailer’s unsettling imagery might seem confusing. It shows a vast, nearly empty room with only a few objects like a chair, windows, and a bookshelf. The camera then appears to move ‘underground’ to reveal another similar room—or maybe the same room at a different moment—and this pattern repeats, becoming increasingly strange as the chair seems to merge with the floor.

Okay, so the trailer is seriously messing with my head! It seems like this place, this space itself, isn’t building the rooms we see, but actually… remembering them. And the creepiest part? It’s like its memory is fading, and each time it tries to recreate a room, it gets a little worse, a little less complete. It’s a really unsettling idea!

The inherently creepy idea isn’t original for the film. In fact, it started in 4chan of all places.

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People have been discussing and sharing photos of ‘liminal spaces’ – those in-between places like hallways or empty lobbies. They often feature simple, somewhat unsettling details, such as plain lighting and wallpaper. What makes them feel so strange is that they’re purely transitional, existing only to connect other spaces, and feel particularly eerie when empty – almost like stepping into a different, unsettling reality between destinations.

It’s a feeling like being alone in a school building after everyone’s gone – that unsettling chill you get when you’re walking down an empty hallway.

The idea of the Backrooms – a seemingly endless maze of empty spaces that smell like damp carpets and are lit by buzzing fluorescent lights – really gained traction in 2019. It’s often seen as the starting point for exploring this strange and unsettling concept.

If you were to glitch through the walls of reality – like falling through the floor in a video game into an area you shouldn’t be able to reach – you’d find yourself lost forever in the endless, confusing Backrooms, with no escape.

The story behind the Backrooms grew rapidly, and in 2022, a short film called The Backrooms (Found Footage), created by 16-year-old Kane Parsons, was uploaded to YouTube and quickly became very popular.

It turned into a full-on web series, with a new instalment releasing just over a year ago.

The film is directed by Parsons, and stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, known for his roles in 12 Years a Slave, Marvel Cinematic Universe films, and Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.

Roberto Patino, known for his work on Sons of Anarchy, and Will Soodik, from Ash vs Evil Dead, wrote the script. Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) and James Wan (The Conjuring) are executive producers on the project.

Backrooms is set to be released in the US on 29 May.

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2026-02-25 21:19